Re: Details about ASR

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"Pilar" wrote

Hello,
I have been reading several MS articles and MS forums threads on ASR, but
still have some doubts about how it works.

I have a computer with 2 HD, 250 GB and 160 GB. It came with XP Professional
pre-installed in the 250 GB disk, that has only one partition.

I have prepared the ASR backup and backed up the .bkf file in a DVD.

So, first doubt: Can ASR use a backup file located in a device other than
the originally specified to ASR wizard?

Also, I am planning to do a clean re-installation of XP to have C: divided
in several partitions, but then:
what would it happen if I had to use ASR?
Will it respect the new partitioning of the system disk?
Will it fail to work?

The ASR restore process is extremely cumbersome. You invoke it by booting from the XP installation CD, then tell it you want to do an ASR recovery. It then installs a clean copy of XP, asks for the floppy, then based on the files on the floppy, restores the backup. That is a long process, and the couple of times I tested it not all the programs worked after the restore.

I would recommend using a drive imaging program such as Acronis True Image (seems to be the favorite these days), Norton Ghost or Terabyte Unlimited's Image for Windows to save a compressed image of the drive to external media, either a USB drive (best) or DVD. It's best to have the image on two different forms of media for redundancy.

--
Rock [MVP - User/Shell]

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Expand drive space and perform ASR
    ... You will get a 40 GB partition on your 300 GB drive. ... Yes you can put your old drives back. ... Note that ASR restore may fail on RAID. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
  • Re: Back up ASR discs
    ... Based on a quick review of the backup & restore procedure in the Res Kit, ... "On the floppy disk, the wizard saves only hard-disk configuration information ... If you run the ASR restore operation later, ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: ASR question
    ... The backup portion is accomplished through the ASR Wizard located in Backup. ... The wizard backs up the system state, system services, and all disks associated with the operating system components. ... It also creates a file containing information about the backup, the disk configurations and how to accomplish a restore. ... During the restore process all data previously found on the System partition will be erased, then XP will be reinstalled, and the data from the ASR backup will be restored. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Procedure to expand system volume XP Pro
    ... > necessary to convert the partition to a dynamic volume first, ... Recovery process and DISKPART. ... Create a backup and ASR floppy using the ASR wizard in the backup ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.setup_deployment)
  • Re: AD User and Group Export
    ... >I am about to change the partition sizes on my server by completely ... System State backup -- and later a restore. ... If this (ASR) doesn't work for you then an ordinary System State ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.active_directory)